Luckmann

Aah, sorry, I must've just messed up the quotes somehow. Sorry 'bout that.

I.. I assumed you were being sarcastic before, but you're.. actually serious?

There is a little devil of a roleplayer and a GM inside of me that thinks that this would be an excellent idea, but in actual play, it would probably be pretty horrible. Yeh, I'm pretty sure it would. Realistically, unless you somehow managed really quick stealth kills, the entire Skaen temple should get alerted to your presence pretty early on. You would have a lot of those Deep Wounds archers sticking pins into you... Then you design the dungeon around that. The thing is.. I mean.. I really want to agree with you. I'm usually very.. "What's the logic behind this?" and "Does this make sense from an in-universe perspective?" and constantly harping on immersion and so on. I mean, I haven't even played the game, and I'm already objecting to shared health between Rangers and their pets based on feel. But.. it's just unreasonable. A single person, acting like a real-life human being, could easily awaken the entire castle. A bullet fired is heard throughout several blocks. A wizard could create a fireball in the sky to alert a full camp of opponents that enemies are approaching. Any person could reasonably see you from a kilometre away, given open terrain. The only solution I can see is designing dungeons with audo-absorbant walls and auto-locking doors that takes a minute to open so you have time to murder the runner. It works in PnP:s because of emergant gameplay, where the GM can constantly change the surroundings around the players to account for whatever they do and how they do it, and there's the possibility to seriously lose without the game being over. You're looking for a back entrance? Roll Awareness and oh, look, there's a ladder here, you don't have to engage the enemies, or you get discovered and this or that happens. A CRPG can't reasonably react to all of that.

But can he do anything else interesting except dealing good damage? Every martial character deals damage, why must wizard also do the same? In IE games, my fighters and archers did most damage, wizards disabled enemies and improved chances for fighters and archers to deal more damage. Those wizards were much more interesting. From a min-max standpoint, wizards were probably - objectively speaking - the most powerful in the old IE games, but when it came to just all-out ravaging everything around me, nothing will ever come close to the complete and utter rapefest that was the time I played with two protagonists (using Multiplayer); both elves, one Kensai, one Archer, Longswords and Longbows. The archer could easily dish out 9¾ Attacks/Round, by the time we met the Tethyrian army in ToB, these two could easily mow through them all without breaking a sweat. It was glorious.

Actually a very good point. I have played several MMO:s and usually dismiss their relevance in most regards to roleplaying games of all kinds, but this is actually a very fair point and an apt comparison. Scouting usually really matters in MMO:s, yet for whatever reason, I don't think I've seen it matter in any single-player game ever. I was already going to hulk up on Stealth for my Bleak Walker, but I didn't really think it'd ever be truly useful. In PoE, it might actually be worth it just to scout around or to position myself, and that's actually amazing. Exactly, I mean, I might harp on a bit about AI:s and relative (in-universe) realism, but I don't think anyone would really want "realistic" AI, where they alert the entire castle the second they see you, refuse to fight you, lock all the doors and await reinforcements, or where that dragon boss you're fighting will just say "Lol no" when he reaches half health and flees, never to be seen ever again. There's so many things and scenarios I can't even imagine anything other than a full party of rogues and rangers pulling off.

I think I saw that in a video, and it's just.. odd, to me. The fact that the party has access to a shared stash at-will that appears infinite is.. what's the rationale? A booming Bag of Holding trade?

Summons can be incredibly hard to balance, considering that even a single mook, even if it was bloody rabbits, it's another opponent that will distract enemies and soak up at least a single hit, requiring the enemy to stop and whatnot. I think that the Ranger is in it's current place specifically because of this; an attempt to balance the fact that the class can put another mobile punching bag on the board.

There is a little devil of a roleplayer and a GM inside of me that thinks that this would be an excellent idea, but in actual play, it would probably be pretty horrible.

The Adventurer's Hall obviously doesn't count. Mute and soulless NPC:s need not apply.

On a rather random note, from what I've seen so far, I actually find it extremely refreshing that scouting makes such a big difference in this game. In most games of this type, scouting has often been completely unnecessary. In fact, I would go so far as to say that scouting has never really existed as a concept, and stealth was primarily used to set up backstabs or similar. Honourable mention to Dragon Age: Origins, not because it encouraged scouting (it didn't), but because Stealth also being amazing for setting up traps anywhere and everywhere. When it comes to the learning curve and prospective tutorials or starting tutorial texts in PoE, I hope Obsidian remembers to impart the importance of scouting to new players, because it appears to make a big difference, and could avoid a lot of "X encounter is too hard!"-arguments. Teach a man to fish and all that.

Hair is extremely easy to fail with, though; let us all try to forget about the countless hair-helmets throughout the years.

What? You can't post such an enthralling title and then just go "Whoops!"! WHAT DID YOU SEE?!

This. The inclusion of optional Friendly Fire would essentially mean that the player would choose between playing the intended game, or play the game as it was never intended to be played (and therefore, since the base assumptions have changed for which the game was built, likely a more boring game). The option would be to build for both systems and try to find a middle ground, but as with everything in gaming, this would reduce both playstyles to the lowest common denominator - which is the exact opposite trend anyone interested in niche markets wants to (or should) go. Imagine a situation in which the game gets reviewed, and the reviewer says to himself that usually, he doesn't appreciate Friendly Fire, so he turns it off. The result being that it completely trivializes combat, and the review suffers as a result. There's no way Friendly Fire can be turned off without compromising core gameplay, and that's why even the option is a bad idea. I'm not opposed to having, say, a hidden option in an .ini-file for turning off Friendly Fire, because by then it is basically a mod or a cheat function, and it's made clear that - because it is not part of the actual Options - it could adversely affect core gameplay. Maybe that would be a fair compromise for those that for whatever reason feel that they just cannot play the game with the intended rules. It's ultimately no different than to change how many Talents you get, Ability Scores, or Skills, which in many games is very easy to do, but you'd never expect to see in in the in-game Options. All in-game Options offered should work with how the game is intended to be played. Again, look at DA:I for a horror-example of how things work (or rather does not work) when you build a game around one mechanic, and then let's you switch it off. It's basically a cop-out so the devs can say "Hey, you can turn Friendly Fire on!"; but that's never what the game was built for, and the option actually makes the game quantifiably worse. It's like the people saying you can turn Quest Markers off in Oblivion or Skyrim, even though the entire system is built around the assumption that they're there.

Last I heard, Steam forced patching and the settings did nothing, and every time Steam updated, the setting would reset either way. But I don't use Steam that much these days (especially not with games that are still regularly getting patched), so I don't know for sure. I just know a lot of people have had a lot of issues with it. In the interest of having all cards on the table, I should also point out that GOG (who arth our lord and saviour) sometimes take way longer to release patches than Steam does, since they recompile the patches themselves or something along those lines, and do brief internal testing to make sure it works, before releasing it. This stems from GOG originally not really being built for games that are still being patched regularly, starting out as Good Old Games.

ROFL A 5 year development cycle that results in a $1 BILLION payout is not, by any definition, a waste of development time. It is by many definitions. The only one you give is monetary. If you don't care about monetary payout and instead focus on making a good game, There's no such thing as a development studio that does not care about monetary payout. So no. Stop defending stupid comments Commercial studios do not make games in the name of altruism. First of all, that's not remotely true. Second, you're making a strawman argument; no-one said that there is such a thing as a development studio that does not care about monetary payout. There are, however, a lot of definitions under which monetary gain is not the end-all be-all of existence. By a lot of definitions, Skyrim was most definitely a waste of development time. I've already addressed this and it's a bit childish to not just admit that your ridiculous hyperbole was wrong.

Because it changes design assumptions, which can have far-reaching consequences. Look at DA:I, for example, clearly designed around the absence of Friendly Fire. Similarly, designing around Friendly Fire and then removing it could result in insanely simplified combat, trivializing encounters. Friendly Fire isn't something cosmetic. Judging movement, controlling combat and effective use of AoE are all tactical decisions. If your companions have moved into range of your own AoE, you're doing something wrong. If enemies have moved out of range, you timed it terribly. BG2 didn't even have targeting reticles, and this was practically never an issue for me. Get a sense of the range of your AoE:s and their cast time. It sounds pretty cool, but I have the feeling it'd end up with wasting more spells than it'd save. You'd cast the spell and be like "Waiting.. waiting... oh shoot, now I missed the opportunity". I'm not sure how it'd work in practice or how it'd be worked in, but it could be neat.

Considering that Cain said he wanted it in the game, it wasn't that much of a stretch to expect. I don't think anyone expects it to be in *now*, as such a late addition, but still. Pillars of Eternity hopefully makes enough for the expansion, and then they'll hopefully do another Kickstarter for PoE II, partly funding it with PoE and partly through KS.

No. As I said, some people need to go back to school and learn reading and comprehension. Looks like you're another one who needs to go back to school. Alright, help me a bit then, what's wrong? Because from my POV, you're pretty much slinging insults and not reading through the posts.

Which is far from a good thing, usually.

Some people really need to go back to school and learn reading and comprehension. Stun didn't say Skyrim is the best crpg ever made. He said it wasn't a waste of development time. And it wasn't a waste of development time. But the logic he used for that was a strictly monetary one. If you judge merit and worth based solely on how much dosh it brings to the farm, BigBripa's comparison is entirely apt. Because under that logic, The Avengers is definitely one of the best films ever made. And he didn't say that from a financial point of view, Skyrim wasn't a waste of development time. He said that it wasn't by any definition a waste of time. Which is just plain wrong. I would never say that Skyrim was a waste of development time for the owners of Bethesda - in fact, it was an unmitigated success. But as per the arguments brought forth in the very first video and also touched heavily upon in the second video, it isn't about financial gain from the viewpoint of stockholders. In fact, I feel that financially was the only way Skyrim wasn't a waste of development time. It's akin to saying that McDonalds isn't a waste of space by any definition, because it is a supremely successful business model. No-one with the palate above hoodrat tier would agree with that sentiment as a general rule. We all know that McDonalds is rubbish, no matter how much money they make per fiscal year. Refuting criticism based on economic success is essentially a strawman argument, because no-one would ever argue against Skyrim (or McDonalds) based on their lack of economic viability.

That is all kinds of hardcore.

Nevermind that they had no idea that you were a mage. You're just some douchenozzle that fell out of a sewer about the same time as the shadow thieves is pulling a turf-war with a half-diety of a wizard. I can't even imagine that the Cowled Wizards would care about Imoen, in context. One thing always struck me as odd, though - I'd expect the guards to want to talk to you, or at least some kind of investigation into the matter where they hear or interrogate bystanders. After all, there was a big chunk of the Promenade that just caved, and the Shadow Thieves were all over the place. I know that in the background, the Shadow Thieves are big players in Athkatla and the law is more or less in their pockets, but it should've at least been a minor plot point.

Elves can't successffully breed with humans and vice versa, their union does not produce offspring it seems. Thus they are two seperate species rather than races of a species. Of course Humans and Elves do have their own races within their species, can't remember the names right now, it'll be on the Wiki I assume. On a semi-related note, the way it worked in Dragon Age: Origins was always odd as hell to me. If people don't recall, in the world of Dragon Age, elves can breed with humans, but the offspring is always human. This is then promptly casually ignored by the marginalized and oppressed elven population in almost all regards, even though you'd expect to see the average elf vehemently opposed to human-elven unions, since it's practically racial suicide in a very pronounced way quite far from the "race"-mixing you see in most other settings or the real world. The decision to exclude the whole half-everything mess from the world of PoE appeals to me not only because it makes a fair amount of sense (why'd dwarves or elves be able to breed with humans, but not with eachother, and why would they then be considered separate species' or races, and not just sub-races or ethnicities?) but also because it means that all those half-everything unions never even get to become an issue, bar arguably some pretty significant breeding-mumbo-jumbo such as performed by gods (see Godlikes, which are, awesomely, infertile). In fact, I can see this being part of the excuse as to why certain comparatively different populations can live together in relative peace, such as Orlans, Humans, Elves and Dwarves living together amicably. I can also see how it'd lead to an insanely successful bordello business.

As hilarious as it is, though, doing it is generally a pretty bad idea. It gives the game an undeserved bad reputation because of the mass amount of people that never figure out that they've been had. I have a faint memory of one game getting progressively slower the longer you played on a pirated copy, leading a lot of people to think that that was simply part of the game, which lead to bad player reviews and the communities around said games backtalking the game itself. If the pirate(s) ever considered getting the game, they sure as hell won't get it if they think it's broken. They'll just think "Oh, good thing I pirated this POS and didn't spend money on it, I'd be SOL", or something to that degree.